December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

MASTERCARD TO TEST IBM DIGITAL WALLET;
by amp＠pobox.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 09:35:00 -0500 (EST) MASTERCARD TO TEST IBM DIGITAL WALLET; Software Will Open Market to Electronic Commerce MasterCard International Inc. this week expects to begin testing its digital wallet developed by IBM Corp. and will offer some of its customers incentives to use the product. The move is expected to advance widespread acceptance of electronic commerce and increase opportunities for Internet service providers (ISPs) and software developers looking to capitalize on what analysts say will be a huge market. The digital wallet, containing a digital ID card, should be available to the mass market in the second half to end of 1997, said Steve Mott, senior vice president of electronic commerce/new ventures at MasterCard. After the IBM test, MasterCard will work with another set of vendors and continue testing through the first half of '97, he said. The other vendors probably will be CyberCash Inc., Netscape Communications Corp., VeriFone Inc., Fujitsu, and Open Market, Mott said. In the first quarter of '97, testing will involve five to 10 merchants and 1,000 card holders, he said. The IBM digital wallet, part of IBM's CommercePOINT family of products, is used with Netscape Navigator and incorporates the SET (Secure Electronic Transaction) protocol. Mott said MasterCard wants to seed the market with the IBM product. "They're going to be our guinea pigs," he said. In the next few weeks, Mott said, MasterCard will announce agreements with U.S. banks, but declined to name them. Next month, MasterCard expects to release from its Web site the SET Reference Implementation Code, which will show developers how to build SET applications, he said. The implementation code, being developed by Terisa Systems Inc., offers "an unambiguous application of the code" to be used to build interoperable software, he said. SET will make credit card transactions more secure because it provides confidentiality for payment information, insures integrity for transmitted data and provides authentication. Ken Mohr, product marketing manager at Terisa Systems, said Visa International Inc. and MasterCard are reviewing the first beta version of the implementation code. The company is scheduled to deliver the second beta version next month, he said. Terisa Systems hopes the second beta will be the last version and that Visa and MasterCard will accept the implementation code in the first quarter of '97, Mohr said. Visa Testing in Europe Visa also is moving forward with efforts to implement SET. Last week, it announced a pilot launch in Europe involving 38 Visa members in 16 countries. A number of banks will be able to offer secure electronic commerce within six months; full implementation of the project will begin in the first quarter of 1998. "Electronic commerce will be global in nature, so it is important we begin work on an international basis," Visa EU President Hans van der Velde said in a prepared release. "SET is now robust enough to go to the single worldwide market offered by the Internet and other networks," he said. Some vendors already have SET-ready products available. VeriFone has its Internet Payment Solution that includes vPOS, vGATE and vWallet to cover the three parts of an electronic transaction. Wells Fargo Bank is one of VeriFone's initial customers. The bank is implementing vPOS and expects to launch the service to merchants in mid-November, spokeswoman Janet Otsuki said. CyberCash has a Secure Internet Payment System with a CyberCash Wallet, Secure Merchant Payment System and CyberCash Gateway Servers. The system has been operational since April 1995. GTE has CyberTrust, which provides digital certificates that are issued over the Internet to consumers with credit cards, Internet merchants and institutions processing transactions. Terisa Systems is working on an as-yet-unnamed product to implement SET into its SecureWeb Toolkit. A beta version will be ready by year's end, Mohr said. Michael Goulde, an analyst with the Patricia Seybold Group, predicted that the SET protocol will greatly lessen the perceived risk of doing retail business over the Internet in 12 to 18 months. But, in a report written this month, he cautioned that there are barriers to electronic commerce. "Consumers won't install the software until it is seen as providing benefits, there won't be benefits until merchants support SET, and merchants won't support SET until consumers have the software. "This vicious cycle probably won't be broken unless Microsoft provides SET-compliant software as an integral part of Windows in 1997," Goulde said. James Miller, a research scientist at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), predicted SET won't be widely available until Christmas '97. He said consumers will take to electronic commerce when one or two large companies figure out that security isn't such a huge issue for consumers and go ahead with electronic commerce. In the meantime, W3C and CommerceNet have completed specifications for the Joint Electronic Payments Initiative (JEPI). JEPI provides a universal payment platform to allow merchants and consumers to do business over the Internet using different forms of payment. The SET protocol was scheduled to be included in the first phase of JEPI, but work on SET was not completed in time, said Daniel Dardailler, JEPI project manager. A second phase should begin by the end of the year, and several companies, including VeriFone, have agreed to participate, he said. The second phase, which is not publicly available, will set out to validate the Universal Payment Preamble (UPP) logic put forward in the first phase and add more payment systems, such as SET, and micropayments, such as CyberCoin, Ecash and Digital Millicent, Dardailler said. JEPI is a standard mechanism for Web clients and servers to negotiate payment instrument, protocol and transport between one another. It has two parts -- Protocol Extensions Protocol (PEP), an extension layer that sits on top of http, and UPP, which identifies the appropriate payment methodology. More information is available at (http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Payments) For more information, contact MasterCard at (914) 249-4606, IBM at (914) 766-1162 or Terisa Systems at (415) 919-1776. =30 30 30= ------------------------ Name: amp E-mail: amp(a)pobox.com Date: 10/28/96 Time: 23:03:26 Visit http://www.public-action.com/SkyWriter/WacoMuseum EARTH FIRST! We'll strip mine the other planets later. ------------------------

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BankAmerica, First USA to Use Net Software From Verifone
by se7en 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

BankAmerica Corp. and First USA Paymentech have bought Verifone Inc.'s payment software for the Internet. They will use VGate and VPos, Verifone's Internet commerce gateway and merchant software. Terms of the deals were not disclosed. A third piece of Verifone's electronic commerce offering, VWallet, will be available once the MasterCard-Visa Secure Electronic Transactions protocol for credit card payments on the Net is adopted. Banks can use the Verifone technology to deliver private-labeled Internet commerce services to merchant customers. BankAmerica and First USA Paymentech join a user list that includes Wells Fargo & Co., Royal Bank of Canada, and Hitechniaga/MBf Group of Malaysia. BankAmerica's merchant services unit, which recently announced an initial public offering as a stand-alone business, processes credit and debit card sales for more than 150,000 merchants. First USA Paymentech ranks third in the merchant business. Its credit card issuing affiliate, First USA Bank, is one of the largest. Roger Bertman, a vice president at Verifone, said the reason these banks "are investing heavily in building the infrastructure" is because "the credit card will be the preeminent [on-line] payment instrument." se7en -------------------------- Majordomo list for Lam3rz: email majordomo(a)edm.net subscribe happyhacker MUWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! --------------------------

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RE: tcmay in favour of redistribution of wealth? NFW/ROTFL
by jbugden＠smtplink.alis.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

attila(a)primenet.com wrote: >et tu, Brute? I thought I was the only one who deliberately >stiffed the United Way, I treated it as a generic example, not a specific one. For the record, I have never donated to the United Way either. >Tim redistributing the wealth?!? I'll be ROTFL for days >over the "insult." >Come on, James, get with the program. I liked Zaid Hassan's response better. In general, I try not to "get with the program" (c.f. Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood" by Robert Frost). But in spite of my best efforts, I still find myself in a well defined demographic group. ;-) >in Canada, you call [redistribution of wealth] National Health >Services which supposedly provides cradle to the grave >social services (which is bankrupting Canada). In spite of these services the spread between Canadian and U.S. Bonds is in favour of Canada out as far as ten years. Interest rates this morning for 90 Day T-Bills: Canada 3.23%; U.S. 5.02%. Remember: correlation is not causation. >=There is naivete and then there is complicity. >=jbugden(a)alis.com >so where do you draw the line? Aye, there's the rub. So far I haven't *explicitly* drawn one. And the line I may draw now is probably different from the line I might have drawn 5 years ago or 5 years from now. Ambiguity I can accept, its ambivalence, apathy and agnosticism that annoy me more. Tim's occasional combination of justifiable apathy tends to be the best combination to trigger a response. Ciao, James The rules of the game: learn everything, read everything, inquire into everything... When two texts, or two assertions, or perhaps two ideas are in contradiction, be ready to reconcile them rather than cancel one by the other; regard them as two different facets, or two successive stages, of the same reality, a reality convincingly human just because it is complex. Marguerite Yourcenar quoted in Complexification by John L. Casti. Les regles du jeu: tout apprendre, tout lire, s'informer de tout... Lorsque deux textes, deux affirmations, deux idees s'opposent, se plaire a les concilier plutot qu'a les annuler l'un par l'autre; voir en eux deux facettes differentes, deux etats successifs du meme fait, une realite convaincante parce qu'elle est complexe, humaine parce qu'elle est multiple. Margueite Yourcenar, Memoires d'Hadrien

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List of reliable remailers
by Raph Levien 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I operate a remailer pinging service which collects detailed information about remailer features and reliability. To use it, just finger remailer-list(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu There is also a Web version of the same information, plus lots of interesting links to remailer-related resources, at: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~raph/remailer-list.html This information is used by premail, a remailer chaining and PGP encrypting client for outgoing mail. For more information, see: http://www.c2.org/~raph/premail.html For the PGP public keys of the remailers, finger pgpkeys(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu This is the current info: REMAILER LIST This is an automatically generated listing of remailers. The first part of the listing shows the remailers along with configuration options and special features for each of the remailers. The second part shows the 12-day history, and average latency and uptime for each remailer. You can also get this list by fingering remailer-list(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu. $remailer{"extropia"} = "<remail(a)miron.vip.best.com> cpunk pgp special"; $remailer{"mix"} = "<mixmaster(a)remail.obscura.com> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek ksub reord ?"; $remailer{"replay"} = "<remailer(a)replay.com> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut post ek"; $remailer{'alpha'} = '<alias(a)alpha.c2.org> alpha pgp'; $remailer{'nymrod'} = '<nymrod(a)nym.jpunix.com> alpha pgp'; $remailer{"lead"} = "<mix(a)zifi.genetics.utah.edu> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"exon"} = "<remailer(a)remailer.nl.com> cpunk pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"haystack"} = "<haystack(a)holy.cow.net> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"lucifer"} = "<lucifer(a)dhp.com> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"jam"} = "<remailer(a)cypherpunks.ca> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"winsock"} = "<winsock(a)c2.org> cpunk pgp hash cut ksub reord"; $remailer{'nym'} = '<config(a)nym.alias.net> newnym pgp'; $remailer{"balls"} = "<remailer(a)huge.cajones.com> cpunk pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"squirrel"} = "<mix(a)squirrel.owl.de> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"middle"} = "<middleman(a)jpunix.com> cpunk mix pgp hash middle latent cut ek reord"; $remailer{'cyber'} = '<alias(a)alias.cyberpass.net> alpha pgp'; $remailer{"dustbin"} = "<dustman(a)athensnet.com> cpunk pgp hash latent cut ek mix reord post"; $remailer{'weasel'} = '<config(a)weasel.owl.de> newnym pgp'; $remailer{"death"} = "<x(a)deathsdoor.com> cpunk pgp hash latent post"; catalyst(a)netcom.com is _not_ a remailer. lmccarth(a)ducie.cs.umass.edu is _not_ a remailer. usura(a)replay.com is _not_ a remailer. Groups of remailers sharing a machine or operator: (cyber mix) (weasel squirrel) The winsock remailer does not accept plaintext messages. The alpha and nymrod nymservers are down due to abuse. However, you can use the cyber nymserver. The nym.alias.net server will be listed soon. See http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~raph/n.a.n.html for details. 403 Permission denied errors have been caused by a flaky disk on the Berkeley WWW server. Hopefully, this is fixed by now. The penet remailer is closed. When sending messages to AOL accounts, don't use mix, replay, or exon as the last remailer in the chain - testing shows them not to work. Last update: Mon 28 Oct 96 6:45:43 PST remailer email address history latency uptime ----------------------------------------------------------------------- cyber alias(a)alias.cyberpass.net ******++**** 34:37 100.00% jam remailer(a)cypherpunks.ca ************ 16:20 100.00% exon remailer(a)remailer.nl.com **##+##*##*# 1:58 99.98% squirrel mix(a)squirrel.owl.de ++++++++++- 2:45:35 99.91% winsock winsock(a)c2.org --.------.- 8:16:20 99.89% lead mix(a)zifi.genetics.utah.edu ++ +++++++++ 36:39 99.87% lucifer lucifer(a)dhp.com ++++++++ 36:32 99.86% balls remailer(a)huge.cajones.com ************ 5:59 99.67% dustbin dustman(a)athensnet.com +-+++-++-++ 1:13:59 99.58% replay remailer(a)replay.com *****+++**** 8:04 99.52% extropia remail(a)miron.vip.best.com ___.--.-.-- 17:10:17 99.16% haystack haystack(a)holy.cow.net +*#++##+*** 3:58 98.70% middle middleman(a)jpunix.com +--++ + +++ 1:38:10 98.14% death x(a)deathsdoor.com * 3:20 13.75% mix mixmaster(a)remail.obscura.com + 2:07:07 6.67% History key * # response in less than 5 minutes. * * response in less than 1 hour. * + response in less than 4 hours. * - response in less than 24 hours. * . response in more than 1 day. * _ response came back too late (more than 2 days). cpunk A major class of remailers. Supports Request-Remailing-To: field. eric A variant of the cpunk style. Uses Anon-Send-To: instead. penet The third class of remailers (at least for right now). Uses X-Anon-To: in the header. pgp Remailer supports encryption with PGP. A period after the keyword means that the short name, rather than the full email address, should be used as the encryption key ID. hash Supports ## pasting, so anything can be put into the headers of outgoing messages. ksub Remailer always kills subject header, even in non-pgp mode. nsub Remailer always preserves subject header, even in pgp mode. latent Supports Matt Ghio's Latent-Time: option. cut Supports Matt Ghio's Cutmarks: option. post Post to Usenet using Post-To: or Anon-Post-To: header. ek Encrypt responses in reply blocks using Encrypt-Key: header. special Accepts only pgp encrypted messages. mix Can accept messages in Mixmaster format. reord Attempts to foil traffic analysis by reordering messages. Note: I'm relying on the word of the remailer operator here, and haven't verified the reord info myself. mon Remailer has been known to monitor contents of private email. filter Remailer has been known to filter messages based on content. If not listed in conjunction with mon, then only messages destined for public forums are subject to filtering. Raph Levien

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Command confirmation request cancelled
by L-Soft list server at EDS (1.8b) 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Your command: SIGNOFF COOL_TRAVELS has remained unconfirmed for more than 48h and is being cancelled. If you did want it executed but were unable to send the confirmation in time, just re-issue the command to get a new confirmation code. The one you were sent before can no longer be used.

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COOL_TRAVELS: UNSUBSCRIBE US
by Mullen Patrick 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This message was received by cypherpunks at toad.com. This is a mailing list. If you look at the To: line in its header, you will see "Cypherpunks Suck". If this isn't a clear sign of a forgery, I don't know what is. Please remove this account, cypherpunks(a)toad.com from your distribution. Thank you for your time and prompt response to this matter. Thank you, Patrick Mullen and other members at cypherpunks(a)toad.com _______________________________________________________________________________ From: COOL_TRAVELS-request(a)plwils00.xweb.eds.com on Sat, Oct 26, 1996 5:47 Subject: You are now subscribed to the COOL_TRAVELS list To: Cypherpunks Suck Sat, 26 Oct 1996 02:03:21 Your subscription to Continental Online (COOL) Travel Specials has been confirmed. Please keep this E-mail as it contains important infomation about the list you've joined. There are two distinct e-mail addresses that you should be aware of. 1. listserv address: LISTSERV(a)LISTSERV.XWEB.EDS.COM. 2. mailing list address: COOL_TRAVELS(a)LISTSERV.XWEB.EDS.COM. The first address: LISTSERV(a)LISTSERV.XWEB.EDS.COM: This is a non-human, administrative, automatic-reply address. This address works similar to a telephone voice response system. You dial a specific number to connect to the voice response system, enter the command/option to complete a specific task. There is not an option to chat with the voice response system. Similarly, the address above does not recognize anything but pre-defined commands. When you send E-mail to LISTSERV(a)LISTSERV.XWEB.EDS.COM, with a command in the message body, LISTSERV(a)LISTSERV.XWEB.EDS.COM will reply to you with a pre-defined response to your command. Commands are not case sensitive, and the "subject:" field does not matter. Here are some useful commands. subscribe cool_travels firstname lastname (To subscribe to the mailing list cool_travels or overwrite your existing account with new information) unsubscribe cool_travels (To unsubscribe the cool_travels list) For security reasons, when you unsubscribe/signoff the list will ask you for a confirmation. When you receive the confirmation, use your mailer's "reply" feature and type OK, and nothing else, in the reply message. This is meant to verify that you really do want to be removed from the list. LISTSERV will notify you once the operation is successful. Please *DO NOT* include the original confirmation message in your OK reply. Again, send commands only to LISTSERV(a)LISTSERV.XWEB.EDS.COM. The second important address is: COOL_TRAVELS(a)LISTSERV.XWEB.EDS.COM: This is the mailing list that will bring you discounts and promotions from Continental Airlines. This is a one-way, announce-only mailing list. It does not accept mail postings from the subscribers. Please do *NOT* reply to the messages sent to you from this mailing list. If you need any assistance, please send an E-mail to: WEBMASTER(a)MAIL1.FLYCONTINENTAL.COM with COOL_TRAVELS in the "subject:" field. We will be happy to assist you. ------------------ RFC822 Header Follows ------------------ Received: by mail.ndhm.gtegsc.com with SMTP;26 Oct 1996 05:47:08 -0400 Received: from toad.com by delphi.ndhm.gtegsc.com with SMTP; Sat, 26 Oct 1996 9:43:28 GMT Received: (from majordom@localhost) by toad.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id AAA19773 for cypherpunks-outgoing; Sat, 26 Oct 1996 00:03:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plwils00.xweb.eds.com (plwils00.xweb.eds.com [205.240.248.140]) by toad.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id AAA19763 for <cypherpunks(a)TOAD.COM>; Sat, 26 Oct 1996 00:03:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plwils00 by plwils00.xweb.eds.com via SMTP (950911.SGI.8.6.12.PATCH825/940406.SGI) for <cypherpunks(a)TOAD.COM> id CAA15495; Sat, 26 Oct 1996 02:03:21 -0500 Message-Id: <199610260703.CAA15495(a)plwils00.xweb.eds.com> Date: Sat, 26 Oct 1996 02:03:21 -0500 From: "L-Soft list server at EDS (1.8b)" <LISTSERV(a)plwils00.xweb.eds.com> Subject: You are now subscribed to the COOL_TRAVELS list To: Cypherpunks Suck <cypherpunks(a)toad.com> Reply-To: COOL_TRAVELS-request(a)plwils00.xweb.eds.com X-LSV-ListID: COOL_TRAVELS Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com Precedence: bulk

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Announcement
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Comments: Authenticated sender is <trotterf(a)[172.16.1.10]> From: "Frank O. Trotter, III" <ftrotter(a)marktwain.com> Organization: Mark Twain Bank To: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 08:55:14 -5 Subject: Announcement Reply-to: ftrotter(a)marktwain.com Priority: normal Bob: Here is an official announcement that can be found at http://www.marktwain.com/prs1096c.html We feel that there is much positive to come from this on the electronic commerce front and will be filling you in more later. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: MERCANTILE BANCORPORATION INC. TO MERGE WITH MARK TWAIN BANK ST. LOUIS, October 28, 1996...Mercantile Bancorporation Inc. (NYSE: MTL), an $18.2 billion asset bank holding company, and Mark Twain Bancshares, Inc. (NYSE: MTB), a $3.1 billion asset bank holding company, both headquartered in St. Louis, jointly announced today that they have signed a definitive merger agreement. The transaction will be a tax-free exchange valued at approximately $855 million. "This merger of Mark Twain with Mercantile brings together the strengths of two high-performing organizations and solidifies Mercantile's position as the largest locally managed, and independently owned banking operation in St. Louis and the state of Missouri," said Thomas H. Jacobsen, chairman and chief executive officer of Mercantile Bancorporation Inc. "It is a compelling transaction that will harness the middle market lending and other specialty businesses of Mark Twain with the power and breadth of Mercantile's operation," Jacobsen added. "Both institutions are generating strong revenue growth, increasing market share and earnings momentum. We're convinced that the synergies between our two institutions will create a highly competitive banking organization with long-term benefits for our customers, employees and shareholders." "This is great news for St. Louis and Kansas City at a time of rapid change in the financial services industry. We are very pleased to partner with Mercantile Bancorporation and form a merged banking entity in which everyone benefits," said John P. Dubinsky, president and chief executive officer of Mark Twain Bancshares, Inc. "Customers of Mark Twain will benefit from the extensive array of consumer products and services developed by Mercantile. Both organizations have outstanding CRA records and together will continue to provide civic leadership in the region," Dubinsky said. Mark Twain Directors unanimously approved the transaction and have indicated that they will vote their shares in favor of the merger. Under the terms of the agreement, Mark Twain shareholders will receive .9520 shares of Mercantile common stock for each share of Mark Twain common stock. The merger is structured as a tax-free exchange and will be accounted for as a pooling of interests. Based on Friday's closing price for Mercantile common stock of $52.125, the transaction is valued at $49.62 per share of Mark Twain common stock. In addition, both Mercantile and Mark Twain will rescind all previously announced share repurchase programs. Mercantile may repurchase up to 700,000 shares in the open market from time to time depending upon market conditions and other factors. Mark Twain Bancshares, Inc., one of the highest performing banks in the country, has 39 banking locations in the St. Louis, Kansas City and Belleville, IL areas. Mark Twain's related financial services companies include: Mark Twain Capital Markets Group; Mark Twain Brokerage Service, Inc.; Mark Twain Commercial Finance Division; Mark Twain International Division and Mark Twain Trust. The merger strengthens Mercantile's presence in the three largest Missouri markets, increasing market share in the Kansas City Metropolitan area from fourth to third; and moving Mercantile to a stronger second in market share in the St. Louis area. Mark Twain's pending acquisition in Springfield, Missouri will further increase Mercantile's market share by approximately 20% in the Springfield area. Upon completion of the merger, Alvin J. Siteman, chairman of Mark Twain Bancshares, Inc., will become Chairman of Mercantile Bank of St. Louis, and will join the Mercantile Bancorporation Inc. Board of Directors. In addition, John P. Dubinsky, will become president and chief executive officer of Mercantile Bank of St. Louis and a member of Mercantile's management executive committee, reporting to Thomas H. Jacobsen. Peter F. Benoist, executive vice president, banking division, Mark Twain Bancshares, Inc., will join Mercantile Bank of St. Louis as a key member of the management team. Joseph E. Hasten, the current president of Mercantile Bank of St. Louis, will assume the position of chairman and chief institutional banking officer of Mercantile's Corporate Bank serving the specialized financial needs of Mercantile's commercial customers throughout the Midwest, reporting to W. Randolph Adams, senior executive vice president of Mercantile Bancorporation Inc. Plans call for the merger, which is subject to the approval of Mercantile and Mark Twain shareholders and all appropriate regulatory agencies, to be completed in the second quarter of 1997. Mercantile Bancorporation Inc., an $18.2 billion multi-bank holding company headquartered in St. Louis, operates banks in Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Illinois and Arkansas. The company has mergers pending with Today's Bancorp, Inc., First Financial Corporation of America, and Regional Bancshares, Inc. Mercantile's non-banking subsidiaries include companies providing brokerage services, asset-based lending, investment advisory services, leasing services and credit life insurance. Contact: Keith Miller (314) 889-0799 millerk(a)marktwain.com Frank O. Trotter, III Senior Vice President Director International Markets Division Mark Twain Bank ***************************************** mailto:ftrotter@marktwain.com http://www.marktwain.com Fax: +1 314 569-4906 --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "The cost of anything is the foregone alternative" -- Walter Johnson The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/

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FDA_dis
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

10-28-96. WaPo: Dissing Declan's Hotwired slam of the FDA conference on regulating Internet advertising and promotion: "Ultimately, this debate isn't about speech. It comes down to how much regulation we want." Declan, singe dis negro inquisto, si? ----- http://jya.com/fdadis.txt ftp://jya.com/pub/incoming/fdadis.txt FDA_dis

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copyright violations
by jacobs＠tfn.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

FYI, American Banker and all sister publications are copyrighted material. As such, only very few select third parties have permission to redistribute our material. Please notify us immediately of any third party contacting you with our material so that we may protect our copyright. Do not redistribute any information you receive from a third party.

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First Union Ahead of Curve with Sun's "JavaStation"
by Copyright Violator 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

When Sun Microsystems unveils today what it is touting as a radical advance in business computing, First Union Corp. will be in the vanguard of those adopting it. The announcement, at a media event in New York, will center on a hot trend that Sun reduces to three words: Java Enterprise Computing. Sun invited First Union, which has already deployed the technology in its capital markets operations, to share the spotlight with other Java innovators such as CSX, Federal Express, and British Telecom. Rarely has a bank company been so much a part of high-tech hype, which makes the First Union case and what it says about the potential impact of Java computing that much more noteworthy. Based on a programming language -- Java -- that came out of Sun Microsystems but is for practical purposes in the public domain, this new approach exemplifies what technologists call "network-centricity." It is widely seen as an antidote to the difficulty and expense of upgrading and maintaining vast numbers of personal computers in large organizations. First Union bought into the idea long ago and views Java computing as "a natural evolution," said Peter Kelly, senior vice president of the company's lead bank in Charlotte, N.C. After about five months of development and use, he reported "a dramatic reduction in both time and cost for training, administration, and maintenance." Participating in the announcement today, he said, First Union is less interested in glory or in endorsing Sun Microsystems -- the bank is drawn to Java because it is "vendor-neutral" -- than it is in "supporting a good business solution." In the network-centric model, processing and programming power reside away from the desktop on computers known as servers. Today's personal computers can be reduced to, or replaced by, less expensive "thin clients." These rely on "fat servers" for what analyst Jean S. Bozman of International Data Corp. calls "the heavy lifting." The computer press has recently given much attention to thin client opportunities in the home, such as an inexpensive appliance for Internet access that Oracle Corp., a leading advocate, dubbed the Network Computer, or NC. Sun's initial appeal is decidedly to the corporate community, where it believes revolutions happen first. "This may be the beginning of an incredible 10-year change in the way we do computing," Sun Microsystems Computer Co. president Edward J. Zander said in an interview last week. A thin client called JavaStation, along with an "easy administration" server, is to be included in Sun's announcement today. First Union is using the station to link a variety of desktop equipment with numerous data bases and files; Java breaks down the barriers between previously incompatible systems. Mr. Kelly said the bank would likely explore the technology's applicability outside of capital markets. Mr. Zander, who is based in Mountain View, Calif., said Java Enterprise Computing is especially and immediately applicable to "what we call fixed-function applications." These include many back-office and customer-service activities in financial services that can be managed and administered centrally and delivered through specialized thin-client screens. But what really attracts technologists' and business managers' attention is the economics. Sun projects 50% to 80% reductions in "the cost of ownership" of PCs, which can be tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars, depending on the size of a corporate network. Hype it may be, but it is hard to find anybody to argue against it. International Business Machines Corp., Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp., and Netscape Communications Corp. -- technology leaders often at odds with one other and with Sun Microsystems -- have each jumped on this bandwagon in some way. (In other NC-related developments Monday, Oracle and Netscape announced a strategic alliance, as did an opposing group that included Microsoft, Intel Corp., and Hewlett-Packard Co.) Sun's ebullient Mr. Zander will talk a blue streak about almost anything on the leading edge, as he did last week in declaring, "Java computing is ready for prime time." But he was also careful not to oversell. Given the huge and entrenched population of PCs, he said, network computing is more evolutionary than revolutionary. Regarding Oracle chairman Lawrence Ellison's vision of $500 NCs' replacing virtually all PCs, Mr. Zander saw a lack of realism because PC-based spreadsheet and graphics applications, among others, are likely to persist. "We're not telling people to give up the power of the PC," Mr. Zander said, but to "put the complexity on the server, where it belongs . . . . It will take a couple of years, but it will happen." Mr. Kelly, who is responsible for First Union's capital markets technology and support, described JavaStation as a logical extension of the bank's work with object-oriented computing -- the programming approach that relies on reusable objects, or building-blocks of code -- and C++, the standard programming language from which Java was derived. Investment banking and capital markets gave Sun Microsystems its first major inroads into financial services, which may explain why Mr. Kelly's department has been looking into Java opportunities for more than a year. The stations have recently replaced "fat client" terminals in trade reconciliation, settlement, and clearing. "The redesign of an interface took only two to three weeks because we were already on the server-centric model," Mr. Kelly said. "This won't be the only client equipment we deploy . . . ," he added. "Interoperability is also our goal." The pricing does have a revolutionary ring to it. Sun said it would begin shipping the entry-level JavaStation in December, with miniSparc chip and eight megabytes of main memory, for $740. With keyboard, mouse, and 14-inch color monitor, it will go for $995; with double the memory and a 17-inch monitor, $1,495. A business PC installation rarely costs less than $3,000. And that is only part of what has come to irk corporate technology bosses. System maintenance, upgrades, and other expenses can amount to $12,000 per desktop per year. Java technology allows changes to be "written once and run anywhere" -- meaning "locally" on thin clients with powerful RISC (reduced instruction-set computing) processors embedded. A large corporation with JavaStations, which don't need hard or floppy or CD-ROM drives or moving parts because they depend on fat servers, "can save millions of dollars and deliver the same or better functionality, even if this is implemented by just 10% of your work force," said Gene Banman, general manager of Sun's desktop systems group. Sun executives expect JavaStation sales and related software applications to flourish -- they already count 450 of the latter -- because of the cost factor and the Internet and intranet boom. Java is "a secure universal interface language" designed specifically for broad distribution over such open networks without regard to hardware and operating-system choices, said Jeffrey P. Morgenthal, research analyst at D.H. Brown Associates, Port Chester, N.Y. Chief information officers can install Java "in phases without jeopardizing the existing infrastructure investment," he said. "I'm hard-pressed to believe that somebody is going to come up with an architecture in the near future to wipe this one out." Ms. Bozman, the International Data analyst in Mountain View, said alternative ways exist to shift the PC-support burden to central sites. But Java is gaining momentum. It burst on the Internet scene in the form of simple "applets" such as moving stock tickers but is evolving toward mission-critical corporate and packaged software. "This is not just happening in the Sun world," she said. "Even Microsoft is selling Java toolkits." Sun financial services vice president Rob Hall said he anticipates a rapid spread of Java computing because of the "dramatically lower total cost of ownership while providing flexible, platform-independent solutions. "We are seeing strong interest in our thin-client JavaStation for process-heavy and repetitive tasks such as trade settlement back-office operations and customer service applications in retail banking call centers," Mr. Hall said.

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